Trigger Happiness

On the day I moved, one of the movers handed me the key to a file cabinet I had never bothered to lock. He had taken the liberty of locking the drawers for me, presumably just to keep them from flying open. I thanked him profusely, and carefully put the key away for safe keeping.

Safe keeping and ready accessibility, just as I did with my extra checkbooks and my favorite scarf. All the items that, weeks later, remain safe (from me) and, if they are readily accessible, it must be to someone else. I cannot for the life of me remember where I put any of these things.

Despite repeated promises to myself that I would shed all that is unnecessary, relocate with only the bare essentials, I have spent the better part of the weeks since my move unpacking boxes filled with things I could certainly live without, many of them things I had forgotten I even had. Occasionally I muster up enough stoicism to toss an extraneous memento, steel myself against the onslaught of old memories that, unlike those of the short term, don't get lost but simply remain dormant. Memories that spring to life with the slightest provocation, memories coated with the kind of silver lining that eludes the more recent ones. The kind of silver lining that will make the already forgotten breakfast I had this morning seem, one day, to have been a royal and happy feast.

I think ahead now to my next move, and have learned to cherish the much maligned but surprisingly utilitarian phenomenon of short term memory loss. No matter how many times I dash out to replenish supplies, garbage bags are disappearing at an astonishing rate. I assess every component of every new arrival in the house, and I eliminate every unnecessary item immediately, racing to avoid any triggers of sentimentality. Birthday cards, thank you notes, pretty packaging, coupons, gratuitous refrigerator magnets and pens. My trash can runneth over, but my storage spaces seek some arbitrary but constant level. When I move again, I will have accumulated very little in the way of useless stuff. All but the most significant short term memories will remain buried, and when, one day, the assault of silver lined images of my past begins in earnest, much of the clutter will be gone.

No doubt, though, I will one day enjoy a few "eureka" moments -- when I find the key to the locked file cabinet drawers, my extra check books, my favorite scarf. I will open long inaccessible file cabinet drawers filled with insignificant things, my misplaced checks will have long been replaced, and the scarf will be a relic of some "what was I thinking" kind of fashion. But, like it or not, finding these things will be like reaching into a grab bag of surprising treats. Treats that remind me of a time that, by then, will seem to be a time of youth and adventure and simplicity.

At the very least, recovering these mundane bits of my present will coat the hectic and exhausting days of this move in sparkling, untarnished metal. I will remember fondly the time I left the house where my kids and I grew up and began to build a new chapter, a chapter filled with ordinary and sometimes downright infuriating moments that will one day make me smile.